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3 Community safety audits
Why conduct an audit?
3.1 Developing a community safety strategy involves planning to deliver services that benefit local communities by identifying local concerns and then working with local people to address those concerns. To be of any value, it has to reflect local people's views and concerns about crime and anti-social behaviour, and other issues such as road and fire safety. This process is complementary to that of community planning.
3.2 Partnerships are encouraged to adopt a problem-solving approach to community safety. This needs a clear definition of problems within an area so they can analyse them and plan possible responses. This approach has the advantages of:
3.3 One of the first steps for any partnership is to carry out a local authority area-wide community safety audit to prioritise problems across an area and analyse their causes. The audit should look at the:
3.4 Audits will promote a shared understanding of community safety problems and provide useful information for developing other local plans [see Box 3.2].
3.5 In England and Wales, there is a statutory duty to carry out a community safety audit and audits have been carried out without additional resources from central government. In some areas this has caused difficulties in producing an adequate audit of activity and community concerns. The average cost of conducting a community safety audit under the duty of the Act was £25,000.
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Box 3.1 Framework for a community safety audit Audit reports should include: Introduction Description of the area Community safety profile Review of policy and practice Recommendations |
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Box 3.2 Development of other local plans Although the primary purpose of the audit is to assist in developing a community safety strategy it can also provide useful information for developing:
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3.6 Partnerships should consider whether the partner agencies are able to carry out the audit themselves. This decision will depend on a number of factors, including local knowledge and skills, previous experience, availability of staff and other resources, and costs.
3.7 Partnerships may decide to form an audit team to bring together the necessary skills in policy development and data analysis from the partner agencies. Competencies needed include:
3.8 Partnerships may decide to contract some, or all, elements of the audit. It is crucial that members of the partnership are involved in the process and share joint ownership of the finished audit. External consultants should have demonstrable experience in such work.
3.9 The audit is intended to highlight the problems in the area and allow strategic priorities or objectives to be set. The audit can also assist in setting targets to accompany the objectives.
3.10 There is often a tendency to gather all available information and then try to decide what to do with it. The amount of information can be overwhelming making it difficult to decide where to start, or when to stop, collecting and analysing data (known as 'paralysis by analysis').
3.11 Some information will be essential for defining priorities, eg crime rates. Other information will be useful later in developing detailed action plans.
3.12 Including too much detailed information in the initial audit can be confusing and distract from the overall aim of priority setting. Start by asking 'what information do we need to define the problems in the area?' and produce a list of information that would be either essential or useful to strategy development [see Box 3.4].
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